Everything in the news is pointing to Taika Waititi to being a very busy man in the next few years. From Free Guy to Next Goal Wins, The Suicide Squad, and more, he’s constantly working. And this isn’t even touching on Thor: Love and Thunder, but to be honest, that’s exactly what I want for Waititi. (He is my favorite director, after all.) So … with the news that Waititi could potentially direct Deadpool 3?
(Paramount Pictures)
To quote the musical Six, “rumors spiral,” and that’s what’s happening with this rumor about Taika Waititi potentially taking on Deadpool 3 next. While the rumor is just … you know, a rumor, it doesn’t mean we can’t unpack why that’d be a perfect choice for director.
One thing that was made abundantly clear with Thor: Ragnarok is that Taika Waititi knows how to direct a superhero movie—or, more importantly, he understands what makes them tick. So often, we’re thrown into these films with directors who either don’t understand what makes these characters tick or they don’t particularly care.
While that’s not really been a problem for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it is something that comic book movies have had to deal with (mainly those we’ve seen come out of 20th Century Fox prior to Disney buying them out). Now though, we have the unique ability within the Marvel Cinematic Universe to combine nearly all the Marvel heroes together, and when it comes to Deadpool, it is uniquely formatted to both make fun of the genre as a whole and still bring Wade Wilson’s X-Men origins into play.
And who better to tackle that than Taika Waititi? While he may not know Deadpool that well (I don’t know his life), he does know the world of superhero films, and almost more importantly, he knows Ryan Reynolds and how he works. And with Deadpool, that’s an extremely important aspect to the film and character.
In case you’ve forgotten (as many of us have), Thomas Kalmaku, in Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern, was played by none other than my favorite Oscar winner (a.k.a. Waititi), and he’s also just worked with Reynolds in Free Guy. Basically, I’m saying that they work well together, and honestly, with a project like Deadpool that has been the child of Ryan Reynolds for so many years, it’s important that Reynolds and the director have similar ideas.
Maybe this is just a rumor, and we won’t see Taika Waititi’s take on Wade Wilson, but it is something I’d thoroughly enjoy. For me, Waititi is the reason I got into Thor. I like Kenneth Branagh’s take fine, but it was Waititi’s vision and humor given to the character that really brought the god to the forefront of my mind.
So doing that for a character I already thoroughly enjoy in his cinematic incarnation? I personally would love to see it. It’d also be nice if the director of Deadpool wasn’t just another white man, too. Let’s just hope and pray that Taika Waititi gets to give us lots of Ryan Reynolds snarking at the camera.
Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
